James B. Weaver

James Baird Weaver (12 June 1833-6 February 1912) was a member of the US House of Representatives from Iowa's 6th district from 1879 to 1881 and from 1885 to 1889, as well as the Populist Party's 1892 presidential nominee.

Biography
James Baird Weaver was born on 12 June 1833 in Dayton, Ohio, and his family claimed a homestead on the frontier in Iowa when Weaver was just a child. Weaver became an activist during his youth, advocating the rights of farmers and workers. Weaver fought in the American Civil War as a soldier in the US Army, and he returned to Iowa upon the war's end; there, he worked on the campaigns of several progressive US Republican Party candidates. Weaver would later switch his political allegiance to the Greenback Party in 1877 after becoming upset with the rise of the conservative wing of the Republicans, and he was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1878 with the support of the US Democratic Party. Weaver won 3.3% of the popular vote during the 1880 presidential election, and he contented himself with representing progressivism in Congress. Weaver supported opening Oklahoma to white settlement and increasing the money supply of the United States, and he continued to represent these views as a member of the Populist Party following the fall of the Greenbacks. In 1892, he won five states as the Populist presidential nominee, but he would decide to give up hopes of having a Populist victory in the elections, instead promoting William Jennings Bryan's candidacy in 1896, 1900, and 1908. Weaver died in 1912 at the age of 78, and many of his proposed reforms would be adopted in the following decades.